Bicycle Music Festival - San Francisco

Music, Wheels And Empowerment

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There has been a music festival in San Fransisco since 2007 that is powered entirely by bicycles!

This video features founder Paul Freedman speaking about the deeper meaning and potential of this movement. It's not just about increasing bike ridership. It's about participating in our own entertainment and creating community.

The amplification for the music at the festival is pedal powered, literally. The audience generates electricity for the sound system by pedaling bicycles, and every material aspect of the festival – sound equipment, instruments, gear, personnel, musicians, and fans – is transported by bicycle.

There are bike-blended smoothies and ice cream available with inventive bike-mounted and bike-powered appliances.

This video features the performance of Rupa and The April Fishes performing "Weeds".

The website for the festival,www.bicyclemusicfestival.com, proudly explains:

"The mission of the Bicycle Music Festival is to promote sustainable culture in general and bicycle culture in particular, by physically engaging and immersing our community in the magic of bike culture, and cultivating and nurturing a network of local sustainable musicians, through our staging of free, community participatory, bicycle-based music events.

The Bicycle Music Festival is the largest 100% bicycle-powered music festival in the world. The free, all-day (and late into the night) event takes place annually in San Francisco, California on the Saturday closest to the summer solstice.

The Bicycle Music Festival features: a 2000 watt pedal-powered PA system, as many as 15 bands, multiple festival stops, outrageous Critical Mass-style bicycle party caravans between festival stops, and zero use of cars or trucks.

With its completely bike-haulable stage, the event is packed up and deployed numerous times: staged sequentially at different public parks and also on a moving “Live On Bike” stage which rolls down city streets."